Monorail route gets Seattle City Council's OK

By Mike Lindblom
Seattle Times staff reporter

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By a 5-4 vote, the council tentatively approved the so-called Northwest Route. The alternative route would have gone around the north end of the Center on Mercer Street.

On another disputed issue, a council committee voted to require at least a 14-foot separation between monorail trains and buildings on Second Avenue, even if monorail columns reduce the road width or require expensive construction near a bank of underground utilities.

Final votes are scheduled June 14, a day before two teams of international companies submit bids to construct the tracks and supply the trains for the new Green Line, which would travel between Ballard and West Seattle by 2009.

Seattle Center roll call The City Council voted 5-4 yesterday to support the Seattle Monorail Project's proposed Northwest Route at Seattle Center, winding around the International Fountain lawn. Voting for the route: Jim Compton Jan Drago Jean Godden Nick Licata Richard McIver Voting against: Richard Conlin David Della Tom Rasmussen Peter Steinbrueck

In its multimillion-dollar ad campaign, the Seattle Monorail Project says it is "on track to break ground this fall." Monorail executives have urged the city to make its decisions soon, so bidders will have enough information to prepare their offers on schedule.

"Every decision they make gets us closer to where we need to be, right?" monorail Chairman Tom Weeks said after the two council votes.

Northwest Route supporters say a route through the Center grounds is cheaper than the alternative on Mercer Street, where columns would obscure entrances to performing-arts theaters.

Critics accuse the agency and its backers of violating the city's premier gathering space by introducing noisy trains and huge concrete support posts.

In its four-decade history, the Center's environment has varied from hubbub — New Year's Eve parties and, in the early years, a hanging gondola across the grounds — to solemnity, when thousands left flowers in the fountain after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Council members Nick Licata and Jean Godden said fears of increased noise are unfounded. "This is not a serene, pastoral environment," Licata said. "The fountain plays recorded music. I was just there — it pumps out the tunes."

Councilman Jim Compton said monorail posts would be worse on the Mercer Street route because they would hamper plans to turn that street into an attractive boulevard.

The Northwest Route was supported by 28 businesses and agencies, ranging from Paul Allen's Experience Music Project to Panda Photo Labs near Mercer Street. The monorail agency has agreed to help the Center by rebuilding its Northwest Rooms around a new station and has guaranteed that the columns would be limited to 5½ feet wide — the only binding limits so far on column size in the city.

Organizers of Bumbershoot and the Northwest Folklife Festival, which are held on Center grounds each year, oppose the route.

City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck, voting against the Northwest Route, pointed out the council's duty "to put the citywide interest first, ahead of special-interest groups." He compared the decision to failed efforts by past generations to raze the Pike Place Market or build a freeway through the Washington Park Arboretum.

Bob Glanzman, co-founder of Save Seattle Center, which opposes the Northwest Route, said members will decide in a day or two whether to launch an initiative against it. Petitions would appear at Folklife during Memorial Day weekend.

In the downtown section, Second Avenue property owners have lobbied to get the tracks as far as possible from their buildings, after the monorail agency in January proposed a 6-foot separation. Five weeks ago, the monorail board agreed to a 9-foot gap. But a landowners' group has insisted on at least 14 feet of space from buildings on the west side of the street.

"I think it's a step in the right direction. At a minimum, it would get the structure off the sidewalks," said Howard Anderson, owner of the Doyle Building at Second and Pine Street. However, he said the monorail group needs to provide additional money for landscaping, lighting and compensation for lower rent values where tracks run past office windows.

Also yesterday, the group Monorail Recall filed an initiative to kill the monorail. Petitions would hit the streets as Initiative 82 next week.

The initiative would prohibit the use of city right-of-way for new monorail construction and operations. The existing one-mile monorail would be preserved.

"There is no governing body that's asking the hard questions, so we're doing that for them," said Tim Wulf, co-founder of Monorail Recall, which needs 17,229 signatures, or one-tenth of Seattle voters, by about Aug. 1 to qualify for a place on the November ballot.

If the group gets the signatures, the City Council would take up to 45 days to either forward the measure to voters, stop monorail construction or put an alternative on the ballot. The next step would be King County, where the initiative would need to reach the elections bureau by Sept. 17 for validation.

Monorail backer Peter Sherwin compared Wulf to a better-known initiative sponsor, Tim Eyman.

"Monorail now has achieved the status in Seattle of having their own anti-tax Tim," Sherwin said.

Mike Lindblom: 206-515-5631 or mlindblom@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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